Viewed by one person at a time, rotating a crank rotated the reel, which displayed frames like a flipbook. The reels held about 850 cards, roughly one minute of motion.

Although mutoscope reels often didn't live up to their racy titles, early reels could be fairly explicit. This one shows a young woman in a dress entering the water of a stream, removing her clothes and bathing in the nude for the rest of the reel.